“Hey,” Cheng had almost barked. “The guy was appointed head of Corporate planetology after you were presumed lost. Chairman Radcek wanted somebody young, bright, and—”
“Controlled by the Corporate teat,” Dortmund had thundered in response.
And with that knowledge, everything made sense. Even when Cheng had told him wryly that, for a while, Capella III was even officially known as Radcek’s planet back in Solar System. It wasn’t until after the Chairman’s demise that the name had been officially changed, though no one on Donovan had ever called it anything but Donovan.
The night had gone downhill after that.
So, here he was in the hospital. He glanced around the Spartan room: the cubicle small, white, with its single window that looked out at a chain-link fence and the shuttle field.
Dortmund swung his lanky legs off the bed and stood. He’d folded his good suit and coat over the back of the chair. Rather than brave the rain, let alone discover what sort of atrocious dwelling the environmentalist barbarians might have assigned him, he’d chosen to accept Dr. Turnienko’s offer of a bed here.
He’d dressed and just finished using the toilet when a soft knock preceded Dya Simonov’s call of, “Doctor? You awake?”
“Yes.” He opened the door to find the woman looking wary, something reluctant in her eyes.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Perfectly, thank you,” he lied.
She made a beckoning gesture. “Come on. Inga’s is opening for her first breakfast. It’ll be packed and slow, but the whole town is going to be there. Millie even shut down the cafeteria so she could be there, too.”
Breakfast in a tavern. Oh, what joy. Dortmund took a deep breath, slung his formal coat around his shoulders, and followed the woman as she asked, “So, has your head stopped spinning yet?”
“No. It’s like waking up to a nightmare. The idea that the evolutionists won, that they’ve ruined this entire world . . .” He winced. “I call it downright dyspeptic.”
“I realize that Donovan is coming as a shock, Doctor. But keep an open mind. It may not be as bad as you think. Granted, it’s only been thirty years since the colony was established, but our work out at Mundo indicates that for the most part, terrestrial and Donovanian organisms don’t mix well. At least on the macroscopic level.”
“Macroscopic? That’s a curious qualifier.”
“Nothing curious about it. Terrestrial biology—be it plant, animal, or microbes—doesn’t seem to find much compatibility with Donovanian life. While we can digest most animal products, albeit not as efficiently, the plant life has a polymer cellular structure that doesn’t break down in our stomach acids. On the other hand, Donovanian molecules, especially TriNA, are finding their way into our bodies.”
He remembered the holographic displays Cheng and Simonov had shown him the night before. He had likened their crash course on Donovanian biology as an experience rather similar to trying to catch a drink at the bottom of a waterfall.
The thought kept repeating: What’s happening here is criminal.
This was Bill Tabor’s work. The young firebrand had been little more than an acolyte in the evolutionary movement. Loud, brash, and foolish, but it appeared that he’d won in the end.
As they stepped out into the damp morning, Dortmund asked, “Doesn’t it bother you? There’s no telling what sort of mayhem has been let loose here. When I left Solar System, there were laws protecting environments.”
“In the decade after you disappeared, most of those laws were changed. Especially with the collapse of the re-wilding areas. They were such failures.”
“I beg your pardon,” Dortmund snapped. “It’s the only way we can reclaim the planet. Turn those vast tracts over to the native flora and fauna. Extirpate any invasive species, be it a grass, mold, or bacteria. We have to return the planet to its pristine pre-human condition.” He could hear himself getting heated.
She shot him a hard look as they approached the large dome. A faded sign over the door read The Bloody Drink. Surely that had to be an attempt at ill humor.
“It cost too much to manage, Doctor. What everyone forgot in the flurry to recreate a ‘living museum of the past’—that was the term, wasn’t it?—was that humans had been managing supposedly ‘wild’ environments for tens of thousands of years. Even a couple of million when it came to Africa and East Asia. You thought you could take humans out of the equation. You were wrong.”
Dortmund stopped short, his anger rising. “Humans were responsible for one extinction after another. All the way back to the end of the Pleistocene.”
“Further than that actually,” she told him dryly, refusing to rise to the bait. “Why do you think there’s only one species of hominin? Some we killed off as competitors, the others we absorbed into the main line of human evolution. Call it the numbers game of genetic swamping.”
He struggled to slow his heart. “You’re nothing but an evolutionist yourself.”
“Well, Doctor, there was a reason that Pak and I were chosen for Donovan. We accepted that evolution was an ongoing process and one of the fundamental laws that governed life in the universe.”
“Then you’re another one of these selfish ‘humans first’ types. If humanity can’t find a use for a species, let it die.” He didn’t care that the vitriol came through.
She held the door open. “Actually, my philosophy is a bit more complicated and nuanced. Further, my adherence to the principles I believe in have cost me a couple of husbands and a daughter who may be alive or dead out there somewhere. I could give a pile of quetzal shit what you think.”
He fought to control his temper, some final thread of sanity holding him back.
She arched a challenging eyebrow, adding, “You, however, have a decision to make. Through Radcek’s patronage, Tabor won. That’s history. So what are you going to do? Stomp off and live like a hermit while you condemn the rest of us as heretics and enemies of the true faith?”
Dortmund’s heart had started to hammer. He lifted his hands. “I can’t be a party to this. Go on. I’ll find my own breakfast, thank you.”
And with that he turned on his heel, striding off toward . . . Where?
He stopped in the middle of the avenue. Tried to access the net. There was no net. Looked owlishly around. The morning light shone on the domes, glinted off the parked equipment. A group of children came racing past, calling hellos and good mornings.
He watched them laughing and bouncing as only children could, before they flung the tavern door wide and went charging inside.
“The cafeteria’s closed,” he whispered miserably to himself. The empty knot in his stomach reminded him that it had been nearly twelve hours since he’d eaten.
So, what to do? Head back to the shuttle? Take it up to the ship? Live there until either a decision was made to return to Solar System or another ship arrived? Hopefully one that didn’t have the flawed mathematics that had cost him fifty years in an instant’s time?
He turned back, took a couple of steps toward the tavern.
No!
He knotted his bony hands at his sides. The last thing he could do was walk in, let Dya Simonov see his defeat.
Evolutionists! They were all stinking, vile evolutionists. Worse, they’d unleashed chaos on Capella III. He wouldn’t deign to call it Donovan, which, in its way, was a monument to an evolutionist catastrophe when they left the man’s body to contaminate alien soil.
This was like being dropped into the pits of hell.
And where in the name of Hob had Sax and Jones disappeared to? He needed them. More than ever. Somehow he had to cobble together a solid front in order to counter the disaster that was Donovan.
But how did one man ever seek to repair the damage? Could it even be done? Or was he—as so many conservationists over the decades—bound to simply record the unfoldin
g disaster? Mark the collapsing ecosystems as yet another proof of the unlearned lessons of humanity?
“Those who know history are condemned to bear witness as those who do not make the same mistakes over and over.” The words rolled acerbically from his lips.
“Professor?”
Dortmund turned, seeing a twentysomething fellow in a marine uniform. The man stood in the middle of the avenue, hair close-cropped, a utility belt at his waist. “Yes? May I help you?”
“I’m Private Kalen Tompzen, sir. The Supervisor would like you to join her for breakfast. If you’d follow me.”
Very well, a small victory. At least he’d spend the rest of the day being disgruntled with a full belly.
He followed the marine back to the double doors that led into the tavern. To his surprise, a set of wooden stairs led down into a spacious subterranean room. The place was crowded, packed with the gun-toting and horrendously garbed locals in their shiny leather and coarsely woven cloth.
Private Tompzen led him through the roar of conversation, clinking plates, and clatter, to a table at the front of the room. Given the nature of the local clientele, it came as no surprise to see a young man pouring drinks behind the bar. The waitstaff couldn’t be told apart from the rest of the riffraff as they hustled plates back and forth.
To his relief, he didn’t see Dya Simonov in the press.
Supervisor Aguila, dressed in a fitted black one-piece suit this morning, was seated at one of the long benches with Shimodi and the tall woman, Yvette Dushane.
The marine indicated that he should take the seat next to Shimodi and across from the Supervisor and Dushane.
“Doctor,” Aguila said, a faint smile on her lips. “Thank you for joining us.”
Dortmund seated himself. “Thank you for the kind invitation to join you.” He glanced around. “I just hope the company proves better than my recent experiences.”
“How’s that, Doctor?” Dushane asked as she fixed him with reserved green eyes.
He ordered his thoughts, seeking to come to grips with the reality of the situation. “It’s been disheartening. First, to lose fifty years? That’s mind-numbing. But the greatest shock has been to discover the extent of the evolutionist disaster here on Capella III.”
“I don’t get what you mean,” Dushane responded.
Aguila said, “It’s an academic disagreement between people in the biological sciences. Started in the early twenty-first century. Scientists and lawyers began crusading for large tracts of land to be set aside as what they called wild zones. Then they used the developing technology to recreate extinct species to put on those lands. Results were mixed, mostly because of the changing climate, and then the wars and famines that intensified in the 2020s. The movement declined until just after the turn of the century when scholars like Dr. Weisbacher here managed to convince the Board that re-wilding was the only way to restore Earth to any kind of stable climate.”
“Had some spectacular failures, too,” Shimodi noted through a mouthful of whatever she was eating. It looked like boiled greens and beans. Whatever it was, it sure smelled delicious. Dortmund’s belly growled its anticipation.
He gave her a sidelong glare and clarified: “We had to learn from our mistakes.”
“Yeah,” Shimodi said. “Like all those dead bison.”
“How’s that?” Dushane asked.
Dortmund cut Shimodi off, quickly saying, “They turned huge tracts of the North American plains into bison ranges in an attempt to reestablish the northern plains grasslands. Millions of acres were confiscated from beef ranchers, fences were torn down, and the bison turned free to roam.”
Shimodi couldn’t resist. “Yeah, no management. Went swimmingly until something called Micoplasma bovis infected the herd, followed by a new strain of anthrax, and then somehow hoof and mouth got introduced from Europe. Being a ‘wild’ population, they had no way to gather the animals or vaccinate them. Fifty thousand bison. Dead. Just like that.”
“It’s not quite that simple, and we learned important lessons. As a result we were able to implement improvements in my programs,” Dortmund replied, eyes narrowed.
Supervisor Aguila said, “These things are never simple. But then the conservationists have always wanted to take humans out of the equation. The problem is, once humans are no longer managing the system, it usually ends in disaster.”
“How then, Supervisor, did life manage for all those billions of years before we came along?” Dortmund asked mildly. “Or Capella III for that matter? And now, here we are. Loose and spilling our vile pollution across the face of a new world. I can’t wait to see what evolutionists make of this.”
Dushane shot a wary glance at Aguila. “So, I get conservationists, what’s an evolutionist?”
Aguila fingered the long scar along her jaw. “The underlying principle is that environments are always changing, that life was made to constantly evolve and adapt to new circumstances, diseases, and changes. So, yes, you’re going to have extinctions that—”
“A criminal excuse to avoid human responsibility,” Dortmund interrupted. “That way any egregious action that results in the extinction of another species is laid to Darwinian law rather than human greed.”
Aguila’s gaze turned cold. “Doctor, if you ever interrupt me in that manner or tone again, I will have you shot. Do you understand?”
Dortmund knotted his hands before him. “Supervisor, forgive me, but I’m unaware of your academic expertise in the disciplines of planetology, biology, or resource management. I’m the department chair, the author of more than two hundred articles—”
“You are a Corporate employee. Under my authority. Upon the conclusion of my business here, you will accompany me to Corporate Mine where I will seek to find some suitable employment for you.”
The Supervisor glanced up at the marine who’d been standing at parade rest to one side. “Please escort Dr. Weisbacher to the shuttle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
While Dortmund tried not to stumble over his words of protest, a young man appeared, asking, “What can I get you for breakfast?”
“The doctor was just leaving,” Aguila told him.
“But I—”
“Come, Doctor,” the marine said. “On your feet.”
As Dortmund stood, the hunger knot in his stomach tightened.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
36
It really pissed Talina off. Mundo was the agricultural breadbasket. The fields were filled with terrestrial foods, grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries. Enough to feed every human on the planet, and when it came to staying here, she didn’t have a chance in hell.
She chewed on that knowledge as Capella’s morning light filtered through the forest off to the east. The purple dawn was greeted by the invertebrates with a new chime. Mist rose from the fields, hanging low, limiting visibility at ground level to less than a hundred yards.
From her vantage point at the shed, Talina sniffed the still air, searched for any movement in the mist. She rearranged her stiff back where she’d positioned herself in an old duralon chair. Her rifle lay across her knees, its action damp with dew.
She glanced down at Kylee. The girl slept just back from the shed door, her thin body curled in a blanket. For most of the night, the kid had moaned, made whimpering noises.
One of Talina’s quetzal hallucinations tried to steal her brain. Some image of blending with stones and sucking shrub while a crest ambled slowly up a game trail and into range.
“Stop it, Tal,” she whispered to herself, half wondering if she wouldn’t eventually imagine herself being eaten by a quetzal. Only to awaken with the realization that it wasn’t an hallucination, but that the jaws around her body belonged to Leaper.
Her stomach had been turning for hours now, adding to the sense of premonition. The
demon quetzal huddling behind her liver was telling her that a fight was coming. She even thought she heard Rocket whispering in her mind.
“Damn it, I really am spirit-possessed,” she whispered to herself, and she imagined the potsherds on her mother’s kitchen floor rearranging themselves, as if by a magical hand.
She stood, wincing at the stiffness in her back and butt. Stepping over to the aircar, it was to find the charge at seventy-one percent. Barely enough to make it to Port Authority, but Corporate Mine was well within range.
After making another survey to ensure that a quetzal wasn’t racing down on top of her, she glanced again at the sleeping girl.
“Can’t stay here, Kylee.”
Careful not to disturb the girl, Talina pushed her aircar out into the morning and loaded the solar panel and charger into the back. Between constantly scanning for quetzals and fighting to keep her attention focused as images were triggered in her head, she managed to load a small crate with produce they’d gathered, and then poured the last of the stew into a bucket.
“What are you doing?” Kylee was sitting up, rubbing sleep-heavy eyes with a grimy hand.
“Making ready to pull our stakes and save our butts, kid.”
“I’m not going.”
Talina sighed, slapped a hand on the aircar’s side, and asked, “Dedicated to becoming a meal for Leaper, are you?”
“This is my home. Rocket’s buried here. So’s my dad.” She pulled stringy blond hair out of her face, looking north. “What’s up there? Just mean people.”
“What’s here? Just a quick death. As soon as they digest and absorb Flash, you know they’re coming for you.”
“What if they learn what Flash did?”
“What if they do? You willing to bet your life that good old Leaper’s going to trot up here, kneel down, and say, ‘Hey, girl. Let’s go for a ride?’”
Kylee gave a surly shrug. “What do I care? I don’t want to hurt anymore. I don’t want to be scared and lonely. All I do is feel sad. It really fucking stinks.”
Pariah Page 21